


Promises, Promises

by Evilchuckles



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, PWP without Porn, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2019-08-01 03:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16277210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilchuckles/pseuds/Evilchuckles
Summary: Some things cannot be promised yet otherwise some things cannot be endured.





	Promises, Promises

It began imperceptibly, in a way that Sanzo considered unacceptably underhand in retrospect. As if it had known itself to be an unwanted complication and thought it best to be quiet, hidden, to grow without Sanzo's notice and certainly without his permission. Until it was too big, too deep, too much a part of him for him to have any hope of exorcising it.

Until it was simply a fact of life.

 

It finally made itself known in a cheap hotel on the border of China in the midst of a precious respite from horror and halfway down a glass of sake. Sanzo looked up, past Goku who had fallen asleep with his head in an empty dinner bowl, past Gojyo who was in the process of feeling up their barmaid, and there Hakkai was reading a book by the fireplace. As he often did. There was nothing special about it, nothing unusual in the way he sat there, firelight catching the glass of his monocle, lips faintly parted in concentration.   
Except for the wound over his good eye. It wasn't even a serious wound. He'd had dozens much worse as they'd fought their way across China but something about it, about the way it intruded onto Hakkai's face, had been eating at Sanzo for days. Making him angry. Making him tighten in his gut, as if that red line was a fissure in the earth, a crack in the world. 

And, for no apparent reason, Sanzo understood why as Hakkai obliviously turned a page. Sanzo saw it all. That he wanted. That he needed. That he loved. That he hated that wound because it was always visible, couldn't be hidden under clothes like all the others, and so was a constant, fucking relentless reminder that Hakkai was mortal and breakable and that if he didn't survive this journey Sanzo would know the exact same level of grief as when he'd lost his father.

And Sanzo knew that would kill him.

 

Hakkai probably thought Sanzo was mad a few days later when he cornered him in the hallway at a different hotel, after too much alcohol and too little sleep, and slammed him up against the wall, hissing,

"Don't die, you bastard... Don't you ever fucking do that." 

Hakkai's eyes widened. He looked stunned, too much so to even push Sanzo off him. 

"Sanzo, what's wrong? Did I do something to worry you?"

Sanzo couldn't help the sudden bark of wry laughter because Hakkai had done something to worry Sanzo on approximately a weekly basis since the day they'd met. 

The laughter earned him Hakkai's Special Look of Concern, reserved for when someone got their leg hacked off or they were all having an apocalypse. It made even the drunken mess that was currently Sanzo's brain think that he was probably behaving inappropriately. 

So he let Hakkai go and backed unsteadily into the other wall, wrapping his arms around his chest to stop the odd feeling that his heart was going to jump up his throat and fucking strangle him.

"Just be careful," he slurred. "And don't die."

Hakkai's bewildered face was interesting. Sanzo was willing to bet that he'd get that same look if he ever tried to kiss him. He'd get that same bemused stare. 

Probably followed by the guilt and recrimination. 

Hakkai was damn good at the guilt and recrimination.

"I promise that I won't court my own destruction," Hakkai said, tentatively, speaking as if the words were dangerous and might attack him as they came out of his mouth. "But considering that we are close to the end of our journey, considering what we know is waiting for us, well... Can any of us promise not to die?"

Sanzo didn't think that that was an acceptable answer. 

It was in no way a fucking acceptable answer!

 

The next day he was hungover but not so much that he couldn't remember how much of a fool he'd made of himself. He curled up sickly in the jeep and waited for Hakkai to start with the worried questions, to start probing. Except that Hakkai didn't. He just gave Sanzo one long thoughtful look, as if something had just occurred to him for the first time and started to drive.

Sanzo experienced a rare moment of uncomplicated gratitude towards another human being when he realised that Hakkai was going to just leave it.

Obviously Sanzo chose well when he got it into his head to get feelings for someone. Hakkai was pure class.

 

Or at least that was what Sanzo thought until the very end, when they were taking a breath before the last battle, already bleeding, already losing hope a little, with strange brief thoughts going through his mind about death, wondering what it would be like. 

Because Hakkai turned in that moment, eyes wild, dirt smudged all over his face, and hauled Sanzo in by his tattered robe, kissed him hard, and said, "Don't you die, either. Do you understand?"

Nearby Sanzo heard Goku begin a stunned comment but he was quickly cut off by the world starting to explode around them.

So that Sanzo couldn't promise either.

 

Days. Weeks. The long, painful, annoying process of bodies healing. At first that was all any of them could pay attention to, all they had energy for, just knitting bones and scarring flesh and then the weary limp of starting the journey home. 

Only after some miles did it begin to dawn on any of them that they had actually survived, as though they couldn't quite believe it and so had had to creep up on the idea over time. They had won and none of them was dead.

There were days of dizzy relief that passed in a blur of sake and (in Gojyo's case at least) sex. Days when Sanzo felt lighter than he could ever remember feeling, when Goku kept trying to hug everyone, and Hakkai's smile was full and real.

Oh, Sanzo knew it wouldn't last forever. They were still who they were. All of them. They still carried nightmares, old and new, and even though this felt like a new birth it really wasn't.

But Sanzo indulged the lie. He let that strange thing, joy, into his body and it lived there for awhile, like an unfamiliar but friendly parasite, making the world seem different.

And somehow the joy, the relief, the head spinning truth that they lived, made him indulge something else. Made him stop hiding it when a spark of hunger followed every incidental touch of Hakkai's fingers, made him meet Hakkai's eyes even when he knew what his own were giving away. Even when he knew what Hakkai would see.

And Hakkai began to hold that gaze, to hold it tight and still. In a way that rose the hair on the back of Sanzo's neck. In a way that had Sanzo in his room later, touching himself.

Until finally he couldn't stop it. Didn't even want to anymore.

 

He went into Hakkai's room without knocking. Hakkai looked up, visibly worried for a moment but the anxiety drained out the his face when Sanzo pulled his vest over his head and then started on his jeans, hands shaking.

"Yes," Hakkai breathed.

And then he was stripping his clothes off too, fast, urgent, as Sanzo climbed naked onto the bed with him, tugging him up for a kiss, hands everywhere that he could touch skin, digging in fingernails until Hakkai gasped, until Sanzo could revel in Hakkai's physicality, in his warm flesh and his beating heart.

In the promise that Hakkai hadn't made.

But had kept anyway.


End file.
